


an earth gone cold

by soundthebells (kosy)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst, Drift Bond, Gen, it's about the Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25056748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/soundthebells
Summary: They’re up by Canada, he thinks, or maybe Alaska. They’d tailed the kaiju for miles before catching it, and the GPS had cut out around the time the thing bashed the jaeger’s head into the cliffs along the coast, decimating most of the electronics. Funny how that works.
Relationships: Sasha James & Tim Stoker, but you could read it either way, implied Tim Stoker/Sasha James
Comments: 29
Kudos: 46





	an earth gone cold

**Author's Note:**

> i watched pacific rim (2013) for the first time two nights ago and then watched it again last night and now we are here. warnings for minor violence, not really worth tagging, but the character death does happen for a reason and it isn't a peaceful one. the concept of drift compatibility really got to me. hope you enjoy!!

Tim wishes he didn’t know the exact moment the fight went wrong. But, of course, he does. 

There’s this clock that hovers right across from the two pilot stations, small but ever-present and visible, so he knows it was exactly 01:39:14 when the kaiju talon managed to fit itself in through the chink in the jaeger’s armor to claw blindly at the inside of the chamber. 

It hadn’t even fucking hit her, that was the thing, but the breach in the hull startled them both and knocked them off balance, and the kaiju used their momentary distraction to bowl the whole damn jaeger over and the supposedly sturdy skull of the thing shattered like a dropped egg when it hit the rocks, and because Tim was in Sasha’s mind and Sasha was in Tim’s and they breathed the same air, shared the same pain, he also knows it was 01:39:26 when the shrapnel buried itself in her gut. But the machine was still working, their living metal tomb. Sasha didn’t even look at him, just gasped for breath and started hauling them both up to their feet, and he went with her, of course he did. Even exposed to open air, comms cut off, they managed to stagger toward the kaiju, arms outstretched. 

The kaiju was a big, nasty thing, writhing and a dirty white-yellow. Like stained teeth. It overwhelmed them with its sheer mass, the first kaiju to really tower over them, but he and Sash had always been quick. He’d never drifted so naturally with anyone except Danny, and that—well.

They managed to keep dodging the damn thing until it wore itself out, even as Sasha’s movements became more and more sluggish and he saw the line of blood trickling down from the corner of her mouth, like a tear or maybe just an omen. They finally managed to catch it off guard and knock it down, and Tim activated the sword with shaking hands, and together they plunged the blade into its throat, pinning it to the frozen earth below. 

They’re up by Canada, he thinks, or maybe Alaska. They’d tailed the kaiju for miles before catching it, and the GPS had cut out around the time the monster bashed the jaeger’s head into the cliffs along the coast, decimating most of the electronics. Funny how that works.

Either way it’s freezing, enough for him to see his breath in the air like the smoke pouring from the wreckage of the jaeger. His hands are shaking as he fumbles with the tethers keeping his limbs and head attached to the system. After a few tries, he finally manages to free himself and drop to the glass-strewn floor. His knees nearly buckle then and there, and his head is spinning with the aftershocks of the drift. They’re still connected, sort of—the drift hangover that the other pilots talk about is no goddamn joke, and he never feels it as strongly as he does with Sasha. Something in him aches for hours afterward, like a part of him is trying to stay connected to her, go back to the cool bluedream space where everything makes sense for once. 

She’s still conscious, he realizes, and stupid, impotent hope surges in him against his will. “Sasha,” he rasps out, scrambling closer over the bent metal. “Sash—” 

“Still here,” she whispers, eyes fluttering open. “Are you—” 

“I’m here. I’m okay.” He’s a little banged up from the fall and he’s got a long scratch scoring down his arm but he can move and breathe and talk, so—okay. He’s okay. 

Sasha, on the other hand, is hanging limp in the contraption, lifting her head to smile at him weakly. “Me too.” 

“No, you’re fucking not,” he snaps, stumbling to undo her tethers as well. “Do you think you can move, or—?” 

“Probably not,” she grits out. “But hanging here is going to be worse in the end—d’you think—a flat surface nearby?” 

Tim looks around desperately. Nothing but frozen ground and frozen metal and frozen rocks. Flat, yes, but it’ll leach the heat out of her fast, and she’s already losing so much blood.

“Y-yeah,” he says, realizing he hasn’t spoken in too long. “Yeah, just let me—” He undoes the last tether and she falls forward, catches herself on his shoulders, but her legs give out instantly and she lets out a pained yelp that she stifles into his arm. On instinct, he leaps to catch her, and the agonized noise she makes when he inevitably jostles the jagged metal sticking out of her torso makes his heart lurch. 

“Sorry,” she gasps. “Sorry, sorry, you’re fine—” 

“Is it alright if I carry you?” he asks. 

“I think walking would be worse, so. Yes,” she mumbles, so, gently, he moves an arm under her knees and lifts her up. She hisses in pain and instinctively curls in on herself, but of course that only makes it worse, and she winces again, tensing in his arms. He wants to cry, but he won’t. She’ll be okay. There’s nothing to cry about. 

Except that he knows her pain. He knows exactly how bad this is. Knows it straight down to his marrow. 

Tim doesn’t believe in a god, but he prays anyway. There isn’t much else he can do. 

Carefully, he picks his way through the metal skeleton of the jaeger,  _ their _ jaeger. Tango Sail, another ridiculous name for a war robot, but the American military alphabet is what it is. It’s still their pride and joy. 

The worst part is he was supposed to be doing this mission with Jon. But Jon was away talking to some UN higher-ups, drifting prodigy that he is, so when Tim got the call to deal with a new nightmare from the breach, he rang Sash instead. Nobody could have predicted it. She doesn’t even pilot much these days; she loves it but she’s a goddamn genius, better put to use in research than in punching aliens. She should still be in the lab or asleep in her bunk, not dying in the wreckage of the jaeger she’d helped design. 

Sasha shifts, hand weakly moving to grab at his shoulder. “Hey. Come back.” 

“I’m right here,” he murmurs, taking the last step down to the ground. No snow, but the rock is just as icy as he’d suspected. 

“No you weren’t,” she rasps, and her tone would be cutting but it’s far too thready. “You were off—I don’t know, having a mental pity party. I’m still alive, you know. Dick.” 

“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” Tim mutters. “And listen, you’re not gonna  _ die; _ the medics’ll be on here soon, you just have to hold out til—”

“The comms are out.” She sounds so weary, so calm. “I saw the pop-up, Tim. Nobody has any idea where the hell we are.” 

“There are satellites everywhere,” he insists. “And HQ knows what direction we were heading. It won’t take them long.” 

“Okay,” she says. “Okay.” Too tired to even fight him. Regardless of the mind-meld, they’d been talking when the jaeger talon broke in. Bantering mid-battle. It was what they did. They liked each other too much to shut up, even when they were inside each other’s heads.

He swears under his breath and kneels on the stone; even through his suit, he shivers at the sudden chill. “Stay with me, alright? Stay with me.” 

“It’s not like I have a choice, I can’t—can’t fucking move, can I?” she gripes. 

He wishes he had something to lay her down on. A parka or a blanket or something, something to make her comfortable or at least put a layer between her body and the cold earth. Instead, he eases her to the ground and lets her head come to rest in his lap. She blinks up at him, eyes hazy. 

“Hey,” she breathes. “Sorry about this.” 

“Don’t apologize. Please.” Tim hates how hoarse his voice is, the wretched tangle of it. He tucks a blood-wet strand of hair behind her ear, allows his palm to rest against her cheek. He’d thought he had all the time in the world with her. He should have learned better by now. This was war, and this was the whole world at stake, and this was the rhythm of it all, the one-two punch that never stops for anything. 

Above them, snow begins to fall. It settles on her eyelashes, and she smiles at him. “Keep fighting after this, okay? Keep—keep on going. You’re too good of a pilot. You’ll find someone else. You have Jon, and Martin, and Basira—” 

“Not like you, Sash,” he whispers. “There’s nobody like you.” 

She brings shaking fingers up to grab his wrist, not pulling his hand away, just holding. Her skin is so, so cold.

An attempt at a smile. “I certainly hope not.” 

“Sasha—” 

“Tim,” she says softly. “It’s okay. It’s what it is.” 

The inside of his mouth tastes bitter. Of course she’d want to go out fighting. Danny had. He does. Everybody who steps foot in a jaeger hopes it’ll be the last thing they see. It’s the nature of the beast, the inevitability of how it must end for them all. 

“I know,” he tells her. He doesn’t even know what he’s claiming to know.

It probably doesn’t matter, though. He  _ does _ know her, full stop. She’s let him into her mind. Into her heart. He’s not an idiot; he understands what it means. 

It’s not nothing, drift compatibility. When she’s not around, he misses her like she’s part of him. Because she is. 

That’s what drifting does. That’s the curse of it. Talk about radiation poisoning all you want. Feeling the loss of somebody you love more tangibly than even the normal grief, feeling it like an eye, like a finger, like lungs—feeling phantom pain in their shape at the edge of your mind for the rest of your life, it’s—

It’s worth it. That’s the thing. It’s worth it to know somebody like that. Even when they’re gone. 

Tim is already bracing himself for her to be gone, and he knows she knows it. They’ve disconnected from the drift, now, but they’re well past the point of needing the neural handshake to read each other. 

They stay like that for a long while, silent except for Sasha’s pained, horrible in-out shudder of breath. He can’t do anything. Can’t move her, can’t take out the shrapnel. He strokes her hair with the hand she isn’t holding, and he looks at her, and she looks at him with glazed eyes. He only knows she’s alive by the sound of her breath and the occasional blink. 

“You’re my best friend,” she croaks into the quiet, “and I love you. More than anyone else.” He can barely hear her over the whistle of the wind in his ears, and he curls in closer to her. “I mean, you know that, right?” 

He tries for a smile and maybe half-succeeds. “I’ve been in your head, Sash. ‘Course I know that.” 

“Yeah, but I’m telling you now. You’re my best friend.” Sasha gazes up at him imploringly, and he nods, doesn’t trust himself to speak. “And it’s—is it horrible to say I’m glad it was you?” 

A breath in. “What do you mean you’re glad it’s me?” 

“I’m glad it’s you here. For this. I wouldn’t want it to be anybody else.” 

Tim lets out a choked laugh. “It is kind of horrible, yeah.” She gives him a defeated smile, like  _ hey, what can you do?  _ “I understand, though,” he adds, then: “I’m—I’m glad it was me too.” He doesn’t think he could accept this happening if he hadn’t been there through every second. “I love you too. Not that it makes much difference now.” 

“I think it does,” she says, eyes fluttering closed again, and he has nothing to say to that. After a pause, she mumbles, “Wish we’d met under better circumstances.” 

“Do you really?” 

“Hah. I don’t know. Probably not. Feels about right, doesn’t it? End of the world?”

He snorts. “Sure.” 

“I do love you, you know.”

“I know. I promise.” 

After that, so slowly, her lucidity begins to slip away. Water through fingers. She’s delirious, in turns breathing too fast and too slow, and he can feel her pulse rabbiting in her throat. 

Tim’s sure she can hardly hear him at this point, but he keeps talking to her anyway. For hours. Tells her about his best kaiju fights and the stupid shit he did at the academy and growing up with Danny and the movies he hates and all the people he’s loved in his life that feels too long for him even at thirty-four; everything she’s already seen inside him. Sings, sometimes, too, when he can’t figure out what else to say, then goes back to talking. He knows he’s rambling, half-delirious himself from dehydration, but she’s looking at him, eyes so wide and vulnerable and fixed on him like he’s the only thing. Snow settles and melts on her skin. He can’t let her be alone, not in this. 

“I’m here,” he whispers, over and over. “It’s okay.” His hands are sticky with blood. “I’m here. Still here.” 

“Still here,” she echoes. No more than a breath. And then even that is gone too. 

For a moment, he stares at her face, uncomprehending. Then he crumples inward, rests his forehead against hers. 

It’s worse than losing his lungs. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! also i plan to maybe write more fic in this universe so stay tuned for that! ones with sasha alive, even! you can find me [@boneroutes](https://boneroutes.tumblr.com) on tumblr, and if you're feeling inclined, comments and kudos are always appreciated <3 thanks again!


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